As a business owner or start-treprenuer, your first thoughts are most likely how others will perceive your business. It’s hard to imagine the growth of your business without a brand, and an exceptional one at that.

Building and developing a respected trusted and tight brand – makes customer retention easier, allows you to charge the premium rates for your services and in turn increases your market.

Despite this, do you have a true understanding of branding, and the tremendous impact it has on your business? How can you stay true to your established brand and values? And how is it possible for brands to lose their way?

The answers lie in the small decisions made every day. Brand erosion occurs through a daily “whittling” away.

Here are a few telltale signs to help you identify whether your brand is losing touch:

1. Disconnect with clients – Relationships with clients are built on trust. But with the direction technology has taken, it’s hard to really know the person behind the back and forth emailing or calls. There is nothing quite like connecting on a human level and that’s why maintaining face-to-face meetings with your clients are so important. True, most clients prefer to communicate via email, telephone or Skype, but insist on a coffee meet-up, even if it’s not business related. This will show them that your core brand values still stand.
2. Trying too many new ideas (also known as too many ideas syndrome: https://goo.gl/8UVGL2) – Bored with the same campaigns each and every year? Without much planning or consideration, you might decide to shake things up and suddenly you find your brand heading down a route you never intended it to take.
3. Customer expectations drop – Maintaining visual and conceptual consistency confirms the reliability and authenticity of your brand. Once you lose the consistency and your brand and communication is all over the place, customers lose their trust and expectation. Take control, set the right expectations from start to finish!

If you can identify any of these three signs, start fixing!

1. Create a set of brand guidelines that is clear and easy to follow for all your company’s staff. This is the best way to keep track of your brand. It’s the dos and DON’Ts bible. Anyone can refer to this document when they are uncertain of some branding practice, and it will help instill good habits for all new and exciting stuff.
2. Templates, templates, templates! Any examples of quality and approved communication documents make it easy to reproduce, amend and use again.

So, as John Maxwell states: “Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.”

Branding is not a luxury, it’s a precious commodity and something that needs to be nursed and maintained.